Now, gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers.

In our courts, all men are created equal.

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system.

That's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality!

Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird

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I'm spot-reading Piper's What Jesus Demands from the World.

Spot-reading is ok, Rev. Dr. Piper encourages it in the "Suggestions for How to Read this Book" on page 15.

Then, with the author's explicit permission, I jumped to sections on justification. Why not?

And the Rev. Dr. Piper says what one would expect¹. Still, I tend to read it another way ...

First, the author's words, emphasis in the original:

The word "justified" and the word "righteous" are built on the same word in the original Greek.

The verb means to "declare righteous" the way a judge does in a courtroom.

He does not make a defendant righteous. He recognizes and declares him as righteous.

This is the way the verb is used in Luke 7:29. "When all the people heard this ... they declared God just [literally, they justified God]."

Justifying God cannot mean making God just or righteous. It means declaring him to be righteous.

What Jesus Demands from the World, John Piper, page 157.

John Piper responds to a person named Don Garlington, who reads these texts as I tend to, by first giving Garlington's position: "this does not mean God credited anything to Abraham which he didn't have, but that he regarded him as what he was. ... 'Abraham was regarded as a righteous, that is, covenant keeping, person ...'"

In concluding his response, John Piper writes, "On exegetical and doxological grounds, I remain persuaded that the imputation of Christ's righteousness is not an alternative to union with Christ, but the result of it."

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¹ He concludes with this, "Our own righteousness, even if produced by God's grace, is not a sufficient foundation for vindication in God's holy presence."